With the exception of principal photography in Oakland, California in March 2001 to June, the majority of the Matrix trilogy was filmed in Sydney, Australia. The entire first Matrix film was shot in Sydney and Reloaded and Revolutions were shot primarily at the Fox Studios in Sydney until production ended in August 2002. The final two films, shot consecutively as one epic film, were shot over a long 270-day production schedule and created over 3,500 jobs in Australia alone. A two-part film of such large proportions employed not only the top billed actors and directors, but also a number of individuals that contributed to the success from behind the scenes.

The 3,500+ jobs developed for the last two Matrix films included 80 full-time actors, hundreds of extras, artists, martial arts choreographers, and numerous other members of the cast and crew.

“It was a massive operation,” says producer Joel Silver. “We had close to one thousand people on the payroll full-time. We were very lucky that we had great continuity of incredible personnel from the first film.”

The Artistic Eye of the Matrix
Geof Darrom, illustrator for comic books such as Hard Boiled, was one of the first artists employed to work on the Matrix trilogy. His illustrations provided inspiration for the Wachowski Brothers’ depiction of a post-apocalyptic world. Darrow developed intricate designs for both the machines of the Matrix films as well as the mechanical sets. In The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, Darrow created conceptual artistic interpretations of Zion, the Machine City and the machine creatures. His insect-inspired designs of the Sentinels and his vision of the Zion military machines contributed greatly to the look and feel of the film.

Along with Darrow, the Art Department employed over 400 people to help bring the design compilations for Reloaded and Revolutions to life. Production designer Owen Paterson and his team of hundreds created almost 150 sets for the final two films, about 70 sets for each film. This is a large increase from the 30 sets he and his team designed for The Matrix.

“That really is a huge amount of sets to build, particularly given the limited number of stages we had,” Paterson explains. “Some of the sets weren’t used for more than a couple of days. It was an enormous logistical effort for Lead Art Director Hugh Bateup and a team of art directors and construction people who made this possible – a real exercise in getting one set finished, shot, broken down and out of the stage to make way for the next.”

APU Creation for Matrix Revolutions
A good way to see how much effort and how many people are involved in a single visual project is to look at the creation of the corps of APUS – Armored Personal Units, giant mechanized fighting machines used by the Zion military to fight against the Machine Army. Several departments spent about a year working together to develop the Wachowskis’ vision behind the APU corps. Originally, computer-designed construction blueprints were developed based on a drawing from Darrow. Next, the Prop Department built a non-functioning actual-sized APU based on the blueprints. The prop was 14-feet high, two-and-a-half tons of steel and had a limited range of motion with arms that were able to be positioned for animation development by the VFX group (designing the computer animated sequences). In order to film actors maneuvering the APUs, the design team built a carriage that was attached to a motion base. The motion base was used to simulate the large movements of the huge machinery. The live-action shots were then blended in with the computer animated VFX shots of the APUs in motion.

“There were probably over 1,000 pieces that went into the creation of the APU and its various elements,” Paterson realizes. “It took a tremendous amount of collaboration among a very large crew to engineer and create this sophisticated machinery.”

Using this small part of the film as an example as to how many people it takes to develop the look of one scene, it is easily comprehensible how this two-part film series alone employed thousands of people.